Homily

To understand the figure of John the Baptist is not easy for us "modern" men and women, surrounded as we are by a civilization of noise, a multiplicity of messages, a distracting chaos, a sort of giant amusement park of the ephemeral. A robust and severe man, in his essence, John is a good companion for us to rediscover the true meaning of life. He is one of the most revered figures, after Jesus and Mary, in the collective imagination of the entire Christian community. His fame, strengthened by the proliferation of his relics, has even spread beyond the confines of the Christian world. It is enough to think of Islam: inside the great Umayyad mosque close to the centre of Damascus is the tomb of John the Baptist, today surrounded by poor people. John is a complex figure. From the very beginning he made people talk. Jesus reproaches the apostles about John, "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?" (Mt 11:7) The Baptist has one defining feature: he is a man who speaks. He speaks loudly, from the pulpit of a severe and essential life, and he shouts to every man and woman that they must wait for the Lord.
John speaks, however, not on his own initiative, but because he was touched by the "word" in that precise year, in that exact place, as Luke notes: "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius...the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness." The "word" is not a passing event or some sort of vaguely spiritual being or even a myth or an idea. Instead it is a historical reality that "descends, at a specific time in history, into the affairs of nations: not only those of the people of Israel, but even those of the Roman Empire as well as ours And the desert is not someplace far from us: it is the desert of our cities where a life worthy of its name is often quite rare. It is the desert of this world where sin and loneliness lead to bitterness and death. John is a witness and a preacher who is free from the games of vice and luxury, free from the intrigue of royal palaces, free from the comfort of those who wear soft robes. He is a poor man. His clothing reveals his poverty: he wears a camel skin and a belt around his waist. His food is poor: locusts and wild honey. But in his poverty he is free.
John speaks forcefully and attacks the Pharisees and Sadducees revealing their ability of pretending to repent in order to never change. Indeed, he is not afraid to speak clearly about what happens in the royal palace, even if his courage will cost him his life. In short, John does not justify the pride of those who feel secure because they live in the palace - or at least close to it - nor the pride of those who feel secure because of some merit or another, perhaps that of being "children of Abraham." Pride is far from John’s heart: "I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal." (See Jn 1:27), he says about Jesus. This humble man knows how to rebuke pride and self-sufficiency with great firmness. Humility is not fear, silence, or moderation. Humility is not a spirit of accommodation. The humble person trusts in the Lord and in the Lord alone.
But strength and forcefulness do not make John inhuman or distant. He knows how to listen and how to speak, and he knows how to perform acts of forgiveness for the long line of men and women who come to him to confess their sins and be baptized with the baptism of repentance. John is a prophet who cries out. He cries out because he has to make room for a new life in the chaotic desert of this world. He wants to open the way of the Lord in the desert. The evangelist Luke takes up the words of the anonymous prophet (Second Isaiah) describing Israel’s return from exile in Babylon. He tells of a straight, smooth road similar to the roads that led to temples in ancient times, the so-called "processional roads" that people walked on, singing and rejoicing. There are so many rough places of pride and arrogance that need to be smoothed out. There are so many valleys of coldness and indifference that need to be filled. That is how to prepare the way for the Lord who is coming. John, in his severe roughness, is a voice: "repent because the Lord is near." It is a simple but radical message. An ear used to hearing these words might count them among those already known; but those who think they already know what the prophet is saying only increase the ranks of the Pharisees who try to avoid "the judgment of God." Perhaps we are also being asked to go to John in the desert and seek his baptism of repentance so we can hope and work for a different world. If we were to go, we would see a wide road open in the desert, where the only traffic – grounds for rejoicing – is caused by the poor, the weak, and all those who are searching a word of salvation.